I have found lots of information on ancient smelting and forging of metal, but precious little on how these ancient people actually found the metal to work with. Most information points to meteor iron and bog/swamp iron, which yielded very small amounts. How did they (or did they even) prospect for iron veins in the earth, well before the invention of things like metal detectors.
In: Technology
The red color thing others have mentioned is good, but it’s also worth saying that sometimes you just needed to know where to go. Some little living things use iron as an important part of their food, and they live in bogs. They make new iron build up, so if you had a bog, you could go and find some to use every few years. The mineral is even called Bog Iron for this reason.
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